History Main / FamilyUnfriendlyAesop

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* ''{{Christmas with the Kranks}}'' was much maligned by critics, who realized that its message essentially boiled down to "[[TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong conformity]] and commercialism are good". The plot involves the lead characters deciding to not expensively celebrate Christmas and thus incurring the wrath of their neighbors, who RogerEbert described as "the Stepford Christmas-enforcers". For the record, we're supposed to be on the neighbors' side. Not to mention the FridgeLogic that hits you when you suspect that if a non-Christian moved into their neighborhood, those nosy neighbors would probably be planning a lynch mob Christmas party. They do try to HandWave this by having one character ask if they're Jewish. Apparently it's perfectly okay to torture the ever living crap out of two people to the point of absolute, rigid conformity as long as it has nothing to do with anti-semitism.

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* ''ThePageMaster'' apparently is meant to give small children the impression that being interested in math instead of sports is bad and that if a father wants his son (who has a fear of heights) to go into a tree house then the son should go into the tree house. Also it's apparently alright for creepy old men to put children in serious danger as long as they learn to love fiction.

* Most superhero comics have [[LighterAndFluffier either]] the aesop that "vigilantism is awesome, especially if you wear a silly costume", [[DarkerAndEdgier or]] the moral that "life sucks, and you can't even deal with it, since [[AdultsAreUseless Authorities Are Useless]] until they're against you".

* The original ''{{The Farmer and the Viper}}: "Don't help AlwaysChaoticEvil creatures, they'll backstab you immediately".
* Similar to ''The Farmer and the Viper'' is ''The Frog and the Scorpion''. The moral seems to be something along the lines of "Bad people do bad things, even when it doesn't make any sense."

* ''BackToTheFuture'' seems to suggest that hitting people is an acceptable way to solve problems and that only macho men have good marriages/careers. Of course, the {{Aesop}} they were going for is "Believe in yourself and be assertive, or you'll be unhappy and people will walk over you". However, the film-makers clearly noticed this since the {{Aesop}} of Parts II and III is more like "Be assertive when it matters, but learn to avoid stupid risks when it doesn't."

* The Book of Job in the Bible. God allows Satan to kill off all of Job's loved ones (among other things), but Job's faith is unwavering, so God gives him a new family. This is supposedly a good and just reward because people are completely interchangeable and it's not like being fobbed off with a replacement wife and children is in any way callous or horrifically insulting. (Or that they had lives, dreams, and aspirations of their own). The moral of that, and far, far too many books in the old testament seems to be that God has no qualms whatsoever about collateral damage.

* One episode of ''StargateInfinity'' has an aesop which, while entirely reasonable, especially in context, is rather surprising: the team learns about being flexible under adversity and being willing to change your approach when it's not working. The moral they announce out loud at the end of the story is, "If at first you don't succeed, [[KnowWhenToFoldEm try something different]]." What's strange about that? The very well-known moral, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," is the point of view ''of their enemies'', who consider changing your strategy to be a sign of weakness, and therefore will ''repeatedly try exactly the same thing that has failed numerous times in the past without variation'' because they "know" that, thanks to their inherent superiority, their original strategy must have been correct. It is never made clear how they managed to become the dominant threat to galactic safety despite being quite plainly mentally handicapped.

* The end of the Cadmus arc in ''Justice League Unlimited'' may be this (see "vigilantism is awesome" in the Comics folder) combined with StatusQuoIsGod. The entire arc seems to suggest that the heroes are abusing their power and Lex Luthor is trying to prove that the U.S and the world can get by without them. Of course, it turns out the League's fears were correct - Lex was manipulating the people to distrust the League while [[spoiler: building an indestructible android to transfer his consciousness into to become a living god - and Braniac was manipulating ''him'' to do it.]] At the very end, the people refuse to let Superman break up the League, with Green Arrow explaining that they need the superheroes after all.

** The ''12-year old'' "heroine's" father is suddenly paralyzed and his only hope is an extremely expensive experimental procedure. What is her plan? ''Rob the bank her mother designed the security system for''. The movie tries to cushion the glorification of this scheme by giving the impression the bank "deserves it" because they refused to give the mother a loan and [[spoiler:having the protagonists caught, only to have the heroine's mother claim it was part of a test of the aforementioned security system, which causes the story to be broadcast on TV, flooding the family with donations for the father's procedure]], yet has the protagonist not suffer ''any consequences whatsoever'' for the fact that she tried to ''rob a bank''. SoYeah. Ends justify the means, kids. Remember that.

** To be absolutely fair, the overall message of "Not Fair" is supposed to be that "physical intimacy is partly an expression of emotional intimacy in a healthy relationship", which isn't quite as Family Unfriendly; the boyfriend is suggested to be less an inherently bad lover and more just a bit too thoughtless and selfish to actually take the trouble to find out how to go about satisfying the narrator, being more concerned with his own gratification ("You're all take and never give"); the narrator in turn is clearly torn about the issue (i.e. she clearly ''digs'' her boyfriend and his positive traits, but just can't get over this whole bedroom thing).

* ''{{Twilight}}'' has the wonderful aesops of "It's okay to drop your friends, family, and your humanity in general in exchange for a hot god-like soulmate boyfriend, a perfect baby, and rich, gorgeous, doting in-laws."
** One Cracked.com article pointed out one in ''New Moon'', that if a girl's boyfriend leaves her, all she has to do is pine away for him and engage in dangerous behavior and she'll love him even more.
** Don't forget "It's alright if your boyfriend stalks you, breaks your truck so you can't visit people, has his sister kidnap you while he's away, and sometimes scares you with his reactions. He just really loves you and is doing it for your protection"
** Hey guys, if you forcibly kiss the girl you've been mooning after, despite her clearly not being interested, she'll realize she loves you after all!
** Imprinting basically teaches us that it's no use taking the time to build up loving and meaningful relationships with someone you really care about and who cares about you. All you have to do is look at just the right person and you'll fall madly in love with them. And hey, they'll fall in love back with you of course!

But there are also morals that don't appear in fiction very often. Morals like "{{No good deed goes unpunished}}," "[[AtlasShrugged Don't automatically share, because some people are moochers]]," or "Peace is not always the answer". For a certain definition of morality, they aren't wrong, but it still seems... jarring, somehow.

** ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' started this with "Homeworld", where Worf's brother was treated as in the wrong, and that he would only do such a thing because he knocked one of the natives up, not for simply humanitarian reasons.

* StarTreck turned the prime directive from the moral of "don't mess with cultures far less advanced than you" to "don't save less advanced people about to die even though we can".

** It's a Family Unfriendly Aesop, but not the one you think: it's difficult to see what the lyrics mean without the Reba [=McIntire=] video, which was written in consultation with Gentry and which reflects what she meant. Fancy is a beautiful Oklahoma teenager in the dustbowl 1930s who is given by her desperately poor mother to a rich man from the city in full knowledge that her daughter will be kept, but at least she'll be fed. Fancy returns to the deserted homestead thirty years later after a career as a successful kept woman in order to forgive her mother, who starved to death decades ago. The moral is, "it's better to sell your children into sexual slavery than to let them die slowly of starvation".